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"Why no mention of the missing channels for most of Monday to thousands of Lawrence customers and the overloaded phone system to report it."That's what I thought. Look around the dial and you'll find the channels elswhere. Their website has accurate info on where Lifetime, TNT, etc. went.

Anyone have experience with satellite HD? And for the record, Oldenuf, some of the channels just are not there. It is not a matter of looking for the new locations. Not up yet includes 244 and many in the $10/month HD pack.

alfie (Anonymous) says: "is the price the same? i feel sunflower broadband is ripping off the public and taking huge advantage of the situation." The price is the same for half the channels you had before, OR if you would like to see all the channels you had before you have to pay $5.00/month/TV. So for me that is an additional 15/month and its not like I can watch all three TV's at once! One in the basement, one in the living room, one in the bedroom. I can't imagine I'll be a customer paying Knorr's new per TV rate structure.

i have a friend who doesnt have any service through anyone. he owns an hd tv. went to wal-mart and bought a $20 hd reciever (basically bunny ears for hd digital) and he gets more hd channels basically all the time as they are converted. this seems to me most logical if you dont want to rely on sunflower or larger rip-off companies.and as far as tv shows are concerned, you can go to the station's websites and watch programs nowadays. i watch lost and the office online every week, one day after it airs on television and am not one to mind that i cant talk about "last night's episode" for a day.

And it is going to get worse. Buy a brand new tv with a kickass digital tuner and you are still SOL on Basic Cable "Bronze Level" packages. You still have to run Sunflowers "less than quality" signal through their $5.00/month/TV "digital converter" which I can assure is not nearly as good as the tuner in your new Sony.Sunflower Cable and Patrick Knorr first attempted spin was that the move to digital was somehow related to the FCC Feb 2009 all digital signal for broadcasters despite the FACT that cable "rebroadcasters" are NOT required to do a thing. When called out on that they then claim their basic tier providers (A&E, for instance) are requiring them to encrypt their programs. Since A&E is a commercial service (paid for in part by advertising) and not a pay-for-view "premium" upper tier and they would like virtually every cable subscriber to get their service as it increases their revenue.http://www2.ljworld.com/chats/2008/may/30/patrick_knorr/Again, the bottom line this is little more than a rate increase, $5.00 additional per TV, and they are spinning it hoping their subscribers will blame the FCC or the cable networks. As much as I hate sending my money to a big out-of-town corporation I spent most of the weekend researching both Direct TV and Dish Network. The "geeks" I know prefer Dish Network and the "family" types like Direct TV. Looks like I can go with Dish Network without having to rewire my house and I will be switching later this month.I don't know how I will live without Sunflower Journeys, Public Access 99, Jaynies Kitchen, or the new 49 Weather/Commerical station, but I suppose I will manage. I should mention that they will NOT be encrypting those lovely channels so you will be able to get those without paying $5.00/month/TV.

If you are unhappy with your cable TV service, then do something about it. Fire your cable TV company! There are ample alternatives. I for one have become re-acquainted with Television over the airwaves, using a device called an antenna. Actually, it's pretty good! Some channels actually look better on the antenna than on cable. And there are no city franchise taxes to pay on it either! Another viable alternative is the Lawrence Freenet. It is your choice.

It's not the "news I was tracking during the day" that bothered me. It's the fact that my business shuts down every time cable service is interupted, and that seems like its been very frequent lately. Phone, internet, and TV all shut down and we pretty much have to sit and wait it out. I should have gone DSL and satelite!!!

I have read everything they have sent me, plus Sunday insert. Many of the HD channels aren't working or aren't there and everytime I call someone says "we are working on it." Oh, and Monday the recording just said "Call back. We're too busy."

That's not what Weedy was talking about. On Monday several channels were not available (including the HD channel carrying the Stanley Cup finals) because according the Sunflower the lightning took out a transformer that somehow cut their link to the "HD sports channels out of KC." How this resulted in the loss of 200-204 and other channels, I have no clue, but that was the explanation I received. Sunflower did offer to give me a credit to my service if I called back later and asked for one. Again, I have no clue why that would require a second phone call, but maybe they wanted to fully compensate me for the loss once its scope was known. Or they were just hoping I would not call back, in which case they won. I didn't call back.

Just to be clear, Sunflower Cablevision is free to set their rates where ever they like and I have no problem with that. Further, The World Company which owns the LJW Online (you are here) and Sunflower Cablevision have allowed me and others to praise them and condemn them without censure and I applaud them for that. However they need to be honest with their customers:"Patrick Knorr has decided to reduce the number of channels of your Extended Basic service by half for the same bucks, or you can pay Sunflower Cablevision an additional $5.00/month/TV extra for what you got before. We make a lot of money leasing you hardware (the longer you keep it the more we make and we get to depreciate the cost of equipment and take it of our taxes) and are going to need that extra revenue to help build out the new generation of digital cable services and the expected increased future demands. Sorry. Coincidently, the FCC is changing the rules for OTA (Over-The-Airwaves) broadcasters in February which has NO impact on us or on our decision to raise your rates."

Baille (Anonymous) says: "And that is why Sunflower has limits on data usage. Even though it costs them nothing - or next to nothing - for people to have unlimited access to data, it would harm their cable TV business."As much as I hate defending Sunflower Broadband (see above) all cable broadband companies are in the same bind, Time Warner and Comcast are considering implementing the same constraints because of NetFlix, Google and others increasing their content delivery over TCP/IP.http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jwm8wu3jZWZLcKfIlycqFqFegknwD9126HN8AAP, "Time Warner Cable tries metering Internet use" Because of its architecture DOCSIS (Data-Over-Cable Service Interface Specification) is far more sensitive to the number of users on a "node" and the amount of data they are pushing (not so sensitive to pulling data, but that is a long complicated story and it is the round trip that is important).Theoretically DOCSIS is faster than ADSL, but DSL far less sensitive (if at all) to how many people are using their modems in your neighborhood. You and your neighbors can both by hitting their maximum and no one notices a drop in speed. Long story short, phone companies never need to meter their service but are slower while cable companies are faster until the node you are on gets saturated.In order for cable companies to maintain their speed advantage as more user come on line and they download more stuff, cable companies must move to smaller "nodes" "rings", and/or more CMTS (Cable Modem Termination System) headends, and/or newer DOCSIS equipment.not a inexpensive proposition.http://computer.howstuffworks.com/cable-modem.htmHowStuffWorks, "How Cable Modems Work"The only options to free up bandwidth for more heavy users is to provide and advertise a slower speed (comparable to DSL), or to provide higher speed but throttle it back as you approach and hit your limit, or build out infrastructure with increased revenue from their customers or have Netflix and Google help pay for the new equipment. Likely some mix of all.

"and as far as tv shows are concerned, you can go to the station's websites and watch programs nowadays."And that is why Sunflower has limits on data usage. Even though it costs them nothing - or next to nothing - for people to have unlimited access to data, it would harm their cable TV business. You can't watch many (any HD?) shows via Sunflower internet without incurring substantial "overage" charges for doing so.

I know a tech that works at sunflower. You know the movie " The Perfect Storm"? That happened to them during the digital conversion. Anything that could go wrong did. As it did with the cable company I work for (not Sunflower). We had huge storms, equipment fail, and anything and everything you can dream of. I know it sucked for you guys but I know in the past week between the two of us we both have over 120 hours... It was a bad week and we both are very sorry to those of you in Lawrence and south of Lawrence.